A Tale of False Fortunes by Fumiko Enchi Read Free Book Online Page A

as he listened to Shòshò, but secretly he was astounded at the empress’ talent for manipulating the juvenile emperor at will. Michinaga knew very well how deeply the tender affections of a beautiful, older woman can penetrate the heart of a youth, and he could not help being conscious of Empress Teishi as a future formidable rival if he should present his own eldest daughter in court.
    After Shòshò finished her account of the incident, Michinaga mentioned casually that he would like to offer a junior lady-in-waiting to the empress’ palace. It was a girl whose identity he could not disclose, and out of regard for the regent (his brother, Michitaka), he wished to avoid the public attention that would result from his making the offer himself. He asked Shòshò if she would not recommend Kureha’s services, saying that she was the relative of an acquaintance.
    Shòshò, unaware of Michinaga’s real intentions, cheerfully took on the task and, assuming the knowing look of one who serves at court, said: “That will be easy. It just so happens that Chapter One c 31

    the empress’ quarters now need one junior lady-in-waiting to serve as her majesty’s personal attendant. I shall recommend this young woman’s services, and say that she is my niece. What does she look like? Anyway, I suppose you’re not saying anything about her family because she has your blood in her.” Michinaga thought it best to treat the matter lightly and go along with Shòshò’s conjecture. “Well now . . . what can I say?
    I’ll leave her in your hands. Just one thing, though—don’t bring her up to imitate your amorous ways,” he said as a parting remark, and roared with laughter.
    Thus, without revealing her lineage and without any hin-drances, Kureha came to serve at the side of Empress Teishi.
    According to A Tale of False Fortunes, it was in the third year of Shòryaku (992) that Kureha of Miwa, assuming the name Koben, came to serve as a personal attendant to Empress Teishi.
    The six years from the first year of Shòryaku—when Michitaka was appointed regent upon Kaneie’s death—until Michitaka’s own demise in the fourth month of Chòtoku 1 were a time of great prosperity for the regency, and it was as if Empress Teishi always had a brightly shining aura about her. It was during this time that Sei Shònagon, author of The Pillow Book, came into Teishi’s service.
    The empress was then between her sixteenth year and her early twenties. In those days a woman was considered in her prime at that age, both mentally and physically. To the youthful emperor, who was just beginning to awaken sexually, the appeal of the intelligent and beautiful empress as an older wife was in every way complete, and through her an image of ideal womanhood took form in his heart.
    Now the empress’ mother, Kishi, had served as a court lady when she was young and was said to have composed Chinese poetry and prose before the emperor. Teishi inherited her mother’s cultivation and was gifted with literary ability. Among aristocrats of that period, it was considered shameful for a woman to look a man directly in the face, and women who served at court were therefore thought somewhat immodest. It was truly an exceptional case for Michitaka, legitimate heir of 32 c A Tale of False Fortunes the Fujiwara clan, to take as his first wife the daughter of a provincial official. Did Michitaka simply have an eccentric personality? Or was Kishi an unusually aggressive woman who cleverly led him on? At any rate, the personality of his own daughter, the empress, was somehow different from what was conventional for noblewomen of the period. Perhaps it was because of that difference that she was able so adroitly to rein a restive horse like Sei Shònagon into a docile pony. In The Pillow Book is a passage—here paraphrased—denouncing men who took a trifling view of women serving at court: There are men who think that women in service at court are generally shallow,